Chapter 6, Making Hamburgers Summary and Analysis

McDonald's managers are committed to building the best hamburger operation in the world. They can learn nothing from competitors but errors and others often liken their operations to the Marine Corps. However, others reject the analogy because McDonald's is full of marketing initiatives and product discovery. There are uniform standards but not regimentation.

Kroc sets the policy and others, if prepared, can compete with them. However, achieving uniformity is the hardest task of a franchiser and Kroc has a particular talent for it. Some companies centralize but Kroc avoids this. For instance, again, he avoids territorial franchising. Instead, Kroc builds a supervisory and support organization to aid franchisers. The author then discusses the reasons Henry's, a rival hamburger chain, goes out of business.

McDonald's focuses on building its operating system and continues to license. Kroc tries to...